Chat wrap with Rob Neyer. "No Yankee is indispensable, and I find the notion that Jeter's indispensable pretty silly, considering how well the Yanks have played without him. If there's an indispensable player in the majors, it's Barry Bonds, as he's the only player who turns a good team into a great team." (ESPN.com)

Prospectus Triple Play: Yankees, Marlins, Pirates. "Nick Johnson's 16-game walk streak ended with a pinch-hit flyout against Keith Foulke on Sunday afternoon. Johnson fell just shy of Willie Randolph's [Yankee] record of 17 games, but more importantly, he may have cemented his role with the team during the run, in which he hit .321/.550/.509 and scored 17 runs." (Baseball Prospectus)

Valdes' return could give Rangers fresh start. "His return is important for a rotation that has had one consistent performer, veteran right-hander John Thomson. The rest of the rotation -- an assortment of potentially good young arms -- has not hit its stride, is taxing the bullpen and forcing the Rangers to make plans on the run." (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

Scott: "I feel like the Rangers are in good hands, almost like if the game stays close, then Buck will find a way to bring the Rangers a win." (Buck and a 1/2, April 29 entry)

Bruce Jenkins has some advice for Bud Selig. "The home-field-advantage team in the World Series [should be] the one with the best regular-season record. After two comical years of letting the All-Star Game decide it, that experiment will be roundly rejected. It wouldn't be a whole lot less appropriate if you decided it with a pancake flip-off." (San Francisco Chronicle)

"We're missing out on a golden age of A's baseball," said Tyler Bleszinski, a diehard A's fan living in Sacramento. "The people who want to watch the games most are being left out in the cold."

The problem is, Sacramento is close enough to Oakland to face A's blackout restrictions, yet far enough away that fewer than half of the team's broadcast games are available.

(Sacramento Bee)

Don Malcolm: "The Tigers are 1-4 this month (as of May 5), which projects out to six or seven wins; that'd be double what they managed in April, a month in which their hitters were historically anemic. The question is-did they, in fact, post the worst hitting month of all time?" (Baseball Primer)

Behind the Mask Q&A. Jason Grady interviews umpire Jim Evans. "The most controversial and abrasive managers were Billy Martin, Earl Weaver, and Dick Williams. Each of them used umpires to motivate their players and to entertain fans. Personally, I respected each of them as excellent managers. However, they were very unfair and totally disrespectful of the game at times." (Baseball Prospectus)

Beat 'em like they stole something. Aaron Gleeman on the Marlins' base stealing. They have 52 steals, twice as many as the second-in-the-majors Angels. (Aaron's Baseball Blog)

These things -- home runs and stolen bases -- are not completely unrelated, for one oft-mentioned reason and one less-mentioned reason.

The oft-mentioned reason is that cited by Bobby Valentine: The greater the chance of the baserunner scoring on a subsequent home run, the less sense it makes for that baserunner to risk removing himself from the inning with an unsuccessful steal attempt.

The less-mentioned reason is that few players can both hit many home runs and steal many bases. And when there's a premium put on home runs, it's easier for the home-run hitter to find a place in the lineup.